Chelsea Webster
Nominee Profile
Location: Sheffield
Having been diagnosed as Autistic ADHD 2 years ago, Chelsea has since made it a key part of her life to raise awareness for autism, provide support to other autistic people and make government processes for change more accessible.
On International Women's Day where the theme was 'Accelerate Action' for equality, Chelsea launched a support group for autistic adults, stating change needs to happen 'Now, not someday. So I'm doing something about it.' The group holds weekly meetings for autistic adults to talk about their lived experiences and has received positive feedback. Chelsea raised questions about long NHS wait times for assessment and the lack of support for autistic adults, noting support is a post code lottery.
The Autism Act 2009 is currently under review in the House of Lords. Noting how inaccessible the review process seemed to be and feeling like this was a barrier for many autistic people to take part and add their voice, Chelsea has organised a group of other autistic people to create 3 accessible ways to take part in the review process, which closes in June. There is now a plain language document that guides people through self submitting evidence and there are 2 ways to provide comments to the group that will then be compiled into an essay and submitted to the committee as evidence. The intention is to give autistic people who find government engagement overwhelming and inaccessible a real voice in the say of how the autism act and related autism strategy will impact their lives (hopefully for the better) going forward.
When the government announced proposed cuts to essential welfare such as PIP, Chelsea created a document compiling various actions to oppose the cuts. She curated a list of petitions to sign, email templates for MPs and in person actions. She collaborated with Crips Against Cuts on instagram and other disabled people to raise awareness for the actions people could take with posts reaching hundreds of thousands of people.
On International Women's Day where the theme was 'Accelerate Action' for equality, Chelsea launched a support group for autistic adults, stating change needs to happen 'Now, not someday. So I'm doing something about it.' The group holds weekly meetings for autistic adults to talk about their lived experiences and has received positive feedback. Chelsea raised questions about long NHS wait times for assessment and the lack of support for autistic adults, noting support is a post code lottery.
The Autism Act 2009 is currently under review in the House of Lords. Noting how inaccessible the review process seemed to be and feeling like this was a barrier for many autistic people to take part and add their voice, Chelsea has organised a group of other autistic people to create 3 accessible ways to take part in the review process, which closes in June. There is now a plain language document that guides people through self submitting evidence and there are 2 ways to provide comments to the group that will then be compiled into an essay and submitted to the committee as evidence. The intention is to give autistic people who find government engagement overwhelming and inaccessible a real voice in the say of how the autism act and related autism strategy will impact their lives (hopefully for the better) going forward.
When the government announced proposed cuts to essential welfare such as PIP, Chelsea created a document compiling various actions to oppose the cuts. She curated a list of petitions to sign, email templates for MPs and in person actions. She collaborated with Crips Against Cuts on instagram and other disabled people to raise awareness for the actions people could take with posts reaching hundreds of thousands of people.